Experts who warned of disaster claim NASA tried to gag them

February 4 2003

Advisors say safety was under pressure from tight budgets, write William Broad and Carl Hulse.

After an expert NASA panel warned last year that safety troubles loomed for the shuttle fleet if the space agency's budget was not increased, NASA removed five of its nine members and two of its consultants.

Some of them now say the agency was trying to suppress their criticisms.

A sixth member, retired admiral Bernard Kauderer, was so upset at the firings that he quit the group, the NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

NASA says it changed the charter of the group so that new members, younger and more skilled, could be added. "It had nothing to do with shooting the messenger," said NASA spokeswoman Sonja Alexander.

One of those pushed off the panel said that was exactly what was going on. "We were telling it like it was and were disagreeing with some of the agency's actions," said Dr Seymour Himmel, a shuttle expert who served on the panel for 20 years.");document.write("

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The Bush Administration on Sunday said it would propose a $US500 million ($853 million) increase in NASA spending, but that the increase was planned before the Columbia disaster.

The panel's most recent report warned that work on long-term shuttle safety "had deteriorated".

Last April, the former chairman of the advisory panel, Richard Blomberg, warned Congress that NASA's management of the shuttle program had drawn "the strongest safety concern the panel has voiced" in 15 years.

"I have never been as worried for space shuttle safety as I am right now," he said.

In an implied criticism of Congress and the White House, the panel said NASA's budgets were "not sufficient to improve or even maintain the safety risk level of operating the space shuttle. Needed restorations and improvements cannot be accomplished under current budgets and spending priorities."

NASA responded to warnings with denials. "NASA will continue to ensure that an adequate staff and shuttle workforce" is available to maintain a perfect record, promised Fred Gregory, NASA's director of space flight.

One report pointed to specific problems that analysts said on Saturday may have played a role in the Columbia's destruction as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere. It called for scrutiny of wiring problems in "difficult-to-inspect regions" of the Columbia shuttle, in particular, a problem that NASA said it had fixed. It also said that NASA was not using the latest scientific techniques to find and fix structural cracks and other consequences of routine ageing.

The panel said that NASA was not working hard enough to find and fix corrosion beneath the tiles that protect the shuttle during re-entry.

Some of the safety alarms stemmed from what experts have described as inadequate NASA scrutiny of parts of the program that have been privatised.